Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Flame Retardant Furniture to Leave Legacy
January 6,
2014 by in Industry, Legal, Product, Upholstery 
New regulations to reduce flame retardants in furniture and other consumer goods rolled into effect with the new year.
Arlene Blum was trekking in the Himalayas when new regulations to reduce the pervasiveness of flame retardants hit the books on Jan. 1 -- more than seven years after she began advocating the change and 37 years after she first published an article about health dangers of the chemicals.
California's new Technical Bulletin 117 removes a decades-old requirement that flame retardants be included in the filling of upholstered furniture. The state rule, which became the de facto standard for the rest of the nation, meant use of the chemicals flourished for years nationwide, despite mounting evidence implicating them in neurological and reproductive disorders, and cancers. For all their ills, the chemicals may not actually slow fires.
"Right now, most people have harmful flame retardants in their homes and in their bodies," said Blum, a University of California, Berkeley, chemist. "And the chemicals don't serve a benefit.
Read Entire Story
Source: Huffington Post